The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to data compression and decompression, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for using a small-sized buffer in compression/decompression with block prediction.
A display interface may be disposed between an application processor (AP) and a driver integrated circuit (IC) to transmit display data from the AP to the driver IC for further processing. When a display panel supports a higher display resolution, 2D/3D display with higher resolution can be realized. Hence, the display data transmitted over the display interface would have a larger data size/data rate, which increases the power consumption of the display interface inevitably. If the AP and the driver IC are both located at a portable device (e.g., a smartphone) powered by a battery device, the battery life is shortened due to the increased power consumption of the display interface.
Similarly, a camera interface may be disposed between a camera module and an image signal processor (ISP) to transmit multimedia data from the camera module to the ISP for further processing. The ISP may be part of an application processor. When a camera sensor with a higher resolution is employed in the camera module, the multimedia data transmitted over the camera interface would have a larger data size/data rate, which increases the power consumption of the camera interface inevitably. If the camera module and the ISP are both located at a portable device (e.g., a smartphone) powered by a battery device, the battery life is shortened due to the increased power consumption of the camera interface.
Data compression may be employed to reduce the data size/data rate of data transmitted over a transmission interface, such as the display interface or the camera interface. In a conventional design, a large-sized buffer is generally required to store information used for encoding/decoding a pixel line, where the buffer size depends on the image resolution. Thus, there is a need for an innovative design which can achieve the desired data compression/decompression through using a small-sized buffer, thereby reducing the hardware cost.